ICE has contracted with Vigilant Solutions, a company that helps law enforcement agencies track license plates on cars in real time. Russell Brandom, who reported the story for The Verge, says police departments mount cameras on their cars or in fixed locations to read license plates. Those numbers are then cross-checked with databases to see if a car has been stolen or if the owner has an active warrant or expired license.

Brandom says municipalities have different agreements with Vigilant. But many have agreed to let the company service the cameras at a discount or for free in exchange for feeding data back to the company.

“It really is this sort of nationwide surveillance network that's been built up privately outside of the reach of a lot of the safeguards that would normally exist if ICE had built this database itself or if we were getting it, sort of, from federal agency,” Brandom says.

ICE could tap into Vigilant’s database, search for a specific license plate and see where it’s been. ICE could also potentially enter a license plate into a “hot list,” so that the agency would be alerted if the plate was spotted, says Brandom.

“You have ICE becoming much more aggressive and much less targeted and, sort of, coherent,” Brandom says. “And I think when you have that being mediated by a private corporation, it gets even more complicated.”

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